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Oil Man 70.3 race report

I finally got time to write a proper race report. Actually may be little bit less than a proper report, because it will only focus on the aspects interesting for me: how well did I execute the race plan and how well did I execute the whole training cycle.

The result is very encouraging: podium in my age group! 3rd place in M35-39 and 14 overall out of 466 finishers (486 in total). I’m quite happy with the result, although I missed almost all secondary time-based objectives. Which is strange, because I don’t think the conditions were very difficult and the competition was not very weak. Lets wait for the USAT rank and then confirm.

This is my third 70.3 triathlon and the last race of this season. I’m going to look at this year’s progress in all disciplines while reviewing this race. The 3 HIMs I’ve done are very different: an Ironman-branded event with 1800 participants including world elite, a small HIM with less than 300 athletes in the middle of nowhere and a relatively well known event with 450+ athletes. But top percentage amounts are probably the best I could do.

Swim

On paper it was my slowest HIM swim ever. About 35 minutes. And I was planning to be under 30 min. The reason was that it was also probably the longest HIM swim I’ve ever done. My Garmin showed 2337 yards. With reported pace of 1:29 min/100 yards I could have totally be under 29 minutes. Looking at the overall place in the 3 HIMs I’ve done my swim time is within 17% – 7.4% – 9.8%. The result is lower than in Poconos, which shows I was not very successful here. I made a mistake during the swim by not washing my goggles right before the start. It was my first land start and I just forgot about it. This lead to a inconsistent sighting and cost me a couple of places in swim roster.

Bike

It was my first HIM on the new bike and the best one so far. I was faster, but not as fast as I dreamed. I did the bike leg in 2:44:00 with average speed of 20.5 mph. This was on a relatively easy course with very nice cool weather. Percentage-wise my bike time, including two previous 70.3 is 29% – 17% – 11.8%. The progress is there, but it’s slow. I have a suspicion that my poor bike handling skills cost me the top 10%. Because power and other parameters of the legs were very good: NP 217W, VI 1.03. Looking at the power fade, it was surprisingly high, around 10%.

I’d prefer to be around 2:30, which is about 10% faster than I’m now. It is an interesting challenge for 2016.

Run

I haven’t hit 1:30, no matter how I try. This time I finished around 1:31:50. I started very very good, the first 3 miles the pace was 15-20 seconds faster than planned time. Did I overcooked? I don’t know, could be. Around mile 10 HR was up and pace was down. It is an interesting question if this would happen if I kept my pace not faster than 6:50 min/mile. In any case I came 5th overall and percentage-wise the progress looks like this: 16% – 3.9% – 1%.